elody met the popular taste, both won a permanent place in the
local liturgy. The hymns were unrhymed and unmetrical, but they may have
been written in the form of alphabetical acrostics, such as appear in
the 119th and a few other Psalms.

It is not impossible that metre and rhyme grew naturally from the
Biblical Hebrew. Rhyme is unknown in the Bible, but the assonances which
occur may easily run into rhymes. Musical form is certainly present in
Hebrew poetry, though strict metres are foreign to it. As an historical
fact, however, Hebrew rhymed verse can be traced on the one side to
Syriac, on the other to Arabic influences. In the latter case the
influence was external only. Early Arabic poetry treats of war and love,
but the first Jewish rhymsters sang of peace and duty. The Arab wrote
for the camp, the Jew for the synagogue.

Two distinct types of verse, or _Piyut_ (i.e. Poetry), arose within the
Jewish circle: the ingenious and the natural. In the former, the style
is rugged and involved; a profusion of rare words and obscure allusions
meets and troubles the reader; the verse lacks all beauty of form, yet
is alive with intense spiritual force. This style is often termed
Kalirian, from the name of its best representative. The Kalirian Piyut
in the end spread chiefly to France, England, Burgundy, Lorraine,
Germany, Bohemia, Poland, Italy, Greece, and Palestine. The other type
of new-Hebrew Piyut, the Spanish, rises to higher beauties of form. It
is not free from the Kalirian faults, but it has them in a less
pronounced degree. The Spanish Piyut, in the hands of one or two
masters, becomes true poetry, poetry in form as well as in idea. The
Spanish style prevailed in Castile, Andalusia, Catalonia, Aragon,
Majorca, Provence, and in countries where Arabic influence was
strongest.

Kalir was the most popular writer of the earlier type of new-Hebrew
poetry, but he was not its creator. An older contemporary of his, from
whom he derived both his diction and his method of treating poetic
subjects, was Jannai. Though we know that Jannai was a prolific writer,
only seven short examples of his verse remain. One of these is the
popular hymn, "It was at Midnight," which is still recited by "German"
Jews at the home-service on the first eve of Passover. It recounts in
order the deliverances which, according to the Midrash, were wrought for
Israel at midnight, from Abraham's victory over the four kings to the
wakefulness of Ahas